Tuesday, May 11, 2010

I spent most of today on the plot and remembered to take my camera and more importantly remembered to take some photos!I had a small harvest to bring home but anything at this time of year is welcome.Rhubarb with which I made a rhubarb and pear crumble, its like a sweet and sour desert!The lettuce is from the greenhouse and is the winter cos which is a lovely crunchy lettuce with a tight heart and some spinach leaves to add to the salad. The salad bed, I have two lots of spring onions, the lisbon and purplette. There is an iceberg lettuce under the fleece,the name escapes me but the seeds were on a tape it is the first time I have tried this and will give an update on progress.Ruby swiss chard went in today as another plotter had too much and kindly passed on the excess to me.In the background is the garlic bed, I am still not sure if they are developing rust but I cut all of the yellowed leaves and tips off of them and they seem to be growing quite well. I soaked them today, I know garlic does not like getting its feet wet but it still needs watering in dry spells. We have had little or no serious rainfall for weeks and the ground is as dry as dust without almost daily watering.The brassica bed now has all of its tenants in place, cauliflower,greyhound cabbage, calabrese, brussel sprouts, turnips and I put in a row burgundy spinach as well. It had to be netted immediately against the pigeon hordes. Blossom on our Lidl bargain apple tree, this was bought at a knock down 4.99e last year by Kathryn.it looked as if it would not survive but so far so good.We have a local radio station which has a gardening slot on Wed and I have heard a few people wondering about flowering rhubarb.I have never seen flowers on rhubarb but it seems to be happening quite a lot this year due to the long dry spell.The plant thinks there is a drought and goes into survival mode and flowers to produce seed. I took this photo on the allotment today, I am glad to say it is not ours as I had been soaking the rhubarb as often as possible. They were just at plant height a couple of days ago but now have shot up to this height and look quite striking.I am not sure how it affects the plant in the long term or if the plant has now gone over completely.Greenhouse update tomorrow,a lot of plants are now gone out to the allotment and space is not at a premium in there for another few weeks at least.

6 comments:

Things are really starting to grow now, Mighty weather for it. As regards the flowers on rhubarb, it's bolting I'm afraid the recommended advice is to cut off the flowering stem as soon as is noticed or the plant puts all its energy into producing flowers instead of stalks for us. However I'm gonna let one of mine progress this way just for the sake of curiosity ...... and to smell it !!

Hi PeggyHere in Canada, the rhubarb routinely bolts. It doesn't hurt the plant. All I do is pull out those stalks and then keep on top of it. Usually we only harvest rhubarb till mid July and then let it do it's thing to get ready for next year. Happy gardening!

Helloo Peggy;) good to see you again. Your garden looks wonderful and the rhubarb : Yum! Thanks for a walk through your cool and productive allotment. I need this living here in HOT, dry and garden-less Khartoum.

I never thought about rhubarb flowering - that's very interesting. So far my brassicas are doing well because of the netting preventing the wood pigeons nicking them, I thought it was slugs that ate them until you mentioned about the pigeons last year!

I've had to water a lot too, though we did have some rain recently but it is still really cold, too cold for my corgette I think.

I love seeing your gardens and what you are doing in them. Oh yes we are getting the rain, it's coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. What's bad is it brings tornados with it. We have been spared, but it makes it hard to plant with the rain and cold! Have a great day and thanks for posting on my blog.

foxylock; I passed on the advice said flowers are now on the compost heap.They are big hollow stems and the flower smell reminded me a little of eldeflower.

jkehler:we normally have so much rain in this country bolting rhubarb is not a problem!We harvest as long as possible but leave a good share of leaves on the plant for next year.

Jo, thank you for the complements and glad you enjoyed, cool does describe it at the moment our sun seems to have deserted us.

Ann, it was a completely new one on me too and those pesky pigeons are everywhere!our weather is supposed to get milder this week which should mean some rain which is badly needed.

PeggyR, I read about or see tornados on TV and even at that distance I find them scary!The weather all over the world seems to have lost the run of itself for the past few months.I have put a link on my sidebar to your blog.

About Me

A mother and grandmother, Have always loved gardening, but I have started an allotment with one of my daughters and some of my grandchildren.That is what has prompted me to blog online to share our experiences and hopefully get help or advice from other like minded people.